


take me down to the river

by dabblingDilettante



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28236348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante
Summary: Dimitri's ghostly fear of pegasi and dancing, or a found sibling and the trans experience.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Edelgard von Hresvelg
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19
Collections: Fire Emblem Trans Winter Exchange 2020





	take me down to the river

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dewdroptown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dewdroptown/gifts).



1)

Dimitri is a child. As such, a child is not typically allowed to say what they believe themselves to be. Regardless, in the midst of quiet discussions with friends and watching knights on the horizon, Dimitri comes to a particular decision.

“You're a boy?” Edelgard says, with some level of disbelief in her voice. “If I am correct, you were introduced as -”

He presses his hand over her mouth and he hopes she won't lick his palm the way Ingrid would. “I know. You won't tell anyone.” He pauses, eyeing her suspiciously. “Will you?”

Edelgard's eyebrows quirk into an annoyed question. He removes his hand. She says, simply, “Why?”

“Because it's a secret,” he mutters.

“Why should the truth be a secret?” Edelgard asks, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “If you so wish, I will handle it right now. With my uncle at my back, nothing will stop me.”

“No,” Dimitri whines quietly. “My father … the king, I don't know if he'll. Accept that.”

Edelgard stares. “Would you like to know a secret as well?”

“What.”

She throws a lock of hair over her shoulder. “People used to think I was a boy. I have since corrected their mistakes.” Though she makes to walk away, Edelgard stops only steps away. “If you don't want others to know. I can't tell them for you. But if they've accepted me, then they have no choice but to accept you.” At that, he looks up and sees that she is smiling at him, radiant and sure. “They can't simply backpedal now that they've made their decision.”

He does not take her on her offer, but Edelgard makes up for that lack in other ways. In ways that a stranger-friend from another land could, that friends he had known since birth could not.

“Dancing?” he mumbles.

“Yes.” Edelgard has a way of announcing deeds and activities as if they'd been planned years in advance. “A young man needs to understand the basics of dance, and you must have two left feet. If you're expected to begin a ball one day, you need to know how to lead. It is simple as that.”

It starts with her hand on his waist. She moves his hand to her shoulder and takes his free hand into hers.

“Do you know anything about dance?” she asks.

He shakes his head no. It had been the second thing he tried to avoid the most, right after pegasi.

“I swear,” sighs Edelgard. “If you weren't introduced as royalty, I'd assume you'd walked in from the turnip patch yesterday. The first thing you want to be aware of is what it feels like to follow someone. If you know how to follow, then you can be a better lead in a dance.”

There is a surprising strength to Edelgard's frame that is hidden by her red billowing dress. Her shoes clap against the floor as if she is trying to tell him something with their sound and he picks up his feet better to match her pace. Matching paces is something Dimitri understands well. He is always trying to keep up with his friends, but Edelgard peers into his eyes with a stark determination, as if she is telling him that simply keeping up will never be enough for her.

Edelgard is fun to be around because she is competitive to a fault, so when he accidentally steps on her foot, she considers nothing of it – no insult, only a frown and another demand that he keep trying harder. And when it is his turn to take her waist and lead her around the room in an awkward semi-circle, Edelgard complains as if she expects more.

“Your partner is not a broom to gently roll across the floor,” she announces. “With hands like this, I would be surprised if you were able to hold a feather duster!”

They cling to each other like competitive siblings, as if Dimitri could ever have a sibling, and bound through the room each day as if dancing was a battle rather than a party activity. And he enjoys it. The play of being a boy in Edelgard's presence, where her concept of being a man and being strong has nothing to do with what he acts like, but rather how he dances.

So when she leaves, all Dimitri can think to give her is a sword and his affection, and it is only after Edelgard is gone that he realizes she was the sister he almost had.

2)

It turns out Edelgard is right. Coming out to his father isn't hard.

The hard part is that becoming the crown prince of a nation is much more difficult than he had previously understood. The name he used to have is erased, easily and without question. But now he has to be taught to rule, and Dimitri had not realized how much they were not teaching him when they had once assumed he would be a spouse to a future king.

Dimitri is lucky because he is not the only one of his friends to finally come out, but he is unlucky in that he is the one who transitioned from child to future king. Before, with Edelgard and his friends, Dimitri thought being a boy was as simple as a name and a sense of self, but it turns out – he was wrong.

Being a boy means one day you will become a man. With magic, anyone could do that. But becoming a man meant being a visionary. It meant being a leader. It meant being able to take any pain and any insult without a show of pain on his face. It meant that, no matter what he did, or what he chose, he would become an animal. Unable to control himself in some way or another.

When his parents die, that's it.

It's the moment he realizes he never really had a choice. He was always going to be a monster. Whether or not he came out.

3)

“That's the future heir of the Blaiddyd family,” people whisper.

Dimitri is glad to be at Garreg Mach, not because he is good at school work. Rather, being around people is pleasant. It makes it easier to play the part. It makes it easier to be a young man, a prince, rather than a beast of war.

Sylvain pats his shoulder. “I can tell you're being aloof again, so I've come to tell you to lighten up.”

Dimitri shakes his head, a little too dramatic. “I had no reason to come across as such. If there's anyone I've offended-”

“Just me,” answers Sylvain. He points across the court yard. “And maybe that stranger over there.”

Dimitri is not good with faces, so much. He's good at hair color. His friends are vibrant as the fabled peacock, and most people at the school had distinctive enough uniform alterations. Strange as he thought it was for them to alter it. He squints his eyes.

“The white haired girl,” Sylvain sighs.

Dimitri frowns. “I have seen multiple girls with white hair.”

“Oh,” he mutters. “Right, right, Lysithea's got a similar look too. I wonder if they're in a Too Serious club or if they want Ingrid to join.”

“Sylvain,” interrupts Dimitri. “Which girl are you talking about. Is there someone else I need to defend from you.”

His friend sighs. “Listen, I. Okay, I'm not here to defend myself, I'm trying to say. Hey look! In the red! Is it a bird? Is it an eagle?” Sylvain drags his hands down his face as Dimitri sttares. “Why yes, it is a _black eagle_ Dimitri did you even look at who was on the class registry.”

“Yes,” he answers.

“Do you _remember_ who was on the registry,” Sylvain asks.

Dimitri says nothing.

“Edelgard. Edelgard von Hresvelg.” To his great restraint, Sylvain is not strangling Dimitri at this moment. Dimitri is impressed. “...you know, future leader of the Adrestian empire! And your totally not-sister!”

“Ah,” he says.

“ _Ah_ indeed,” Sylvain groans. “Just. Maybe go talk to her and get out of your head for a few seconds. It's some kind of good memory, right?” There is a hint of a bitter smile on his face, but he gives Dimitri no time to ask about it.

Dimitri gazes back across the courtyard. Maybe Sylvain is right. Maybe that is Edelgard von Hresvelg, princess of the Empire, hidden figure under the snowy veil of Faerghus. But this girl draped in red has white hair. Not the warm and plain brown of the girl he knew as a child.

But the look she gives him is not that of someone meeting a long lost friend. The look she gives him is one of some suspicion. Competition. Distance. It is a look that makes him swallow the words in his throat, because this Edelgard does not remember the quiet confession made between them so many years ago now. She shows no interest or surprise in the reality that he is now Prince Dimitri to the world's eyes.

But there is something in the way she says his name. “Dimitri, if I am not correct? I am pleased to meet the prince of my neighboring kingdom.”

The fact that even if she does not remember, the two of them are in public as they wanted to be, seen as the people they had worked to present themselves as for so long. And she could call him a prince without it being such a secret.

So he says, “Well met.” And leaves it at that.

Because if nothing else. A man knew how to hide his feelings. Terrible as it made him feel to do.

4)

Perhaps it is the moments before he moves that Dimitri realizes Edelgard intends for him to kill her.

Her knife, the one he gave her, used as a weapon against him. If he were a proper man, one who hid his feelings, and a monster to the last, he would strike her down as she deserved to be.

But she doesn't deserve it.

He doesn't want to do that to himself.

No one kills Edelgard. Maybe she has to answer for many things, but Dimitri is not a proper man. Be he trans or otherwise, he never wanted to be what Faerghus considered proper. And he wouldn't be.

“I'm surprised to see you down here,” Ingrid says.

Dimitri nods as he sees her fly down to the pegasus stands. She lands lightly off her mount and strides over to him with a pep in her step.

“Are you finally going to let me teach you how to ride?”

The pegasus does not move away from his hand. The thought used to make him feel sick. Used to make him feel that it knew he was no true man. That at his core, he could never escape what he'd been born as.

But instead, he feels. Peace. “I'm considering it. I'm still no fan of heights.”

What the pegasus saw didn't particularly matter. Nor anyone else.


End file.
